Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has disclosed his company is "working with" special counsel Robert Mueller in the federal probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and working hard to change its own operations after the harvesting of users' private information by a Trump campaign-affiliated data-mining company.
The founder of the social media giant publicly apologized for his company's errors in failing to better protect the personal information of its millions of users, a controversy that has brought a flood of bad publicity and sent the company's stock value plunging. He seemed to achieve a measure of success: Facebook shares surged 4.5 per cent for the day, the biggest gain in two years.
Zuckerberg told the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees that he has not been personally interviewed by Mueller's team, but "I know we're working with them." He offered no details, citing a concern about confidentiality rules of the investigation.
Earlier this year Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies in a plot to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through a social media propaganda effort that included online ad purchases using US aliases and politicking on U.S. soil. A number of the Russian ads were on Facebook.PTI
